Talking Dirt
I spent the day outside tending the gardens and getting some seeds sewn for indoors. It was a glorious day spent with the young’uns and seeing them free and basking in the sun and warm air! As we worked our way around our large suburban swatches of land, I was reminding my daughter to be careful of the tiny buds that were just breaking through. A hyacinth here, a tulip there, a daffodil on the other side, they were still so tender so we gingerly cleaned all the yuck around them. We were cleaning out the day lilies and trying to give the new peony buds a place to breathe. In the middle was a rose bush that hasn’t ever bloomed…but maybe will this year. Maybe if I tend it a little. But just a little, I hope. In the vegetable patch there was some garlic breaking through and some parsley taking shape. The strawberries had spread some more and the raspberry bush was horning in as it does if not curbed. I so wanted to plant the snap peas and the spinach and lettuce but the ground needs more working first. So, in hope, I sowed my basil and tomatoes…and some Shasta daisies to sit on my sills and wait until they are ready to be planted amidst the things that can handle the harsh and unpredictable Spring weather of the Northeast. I enjoy the time I get to do this. To see each of these plants at their beginning, much like when I see a newborn, it is such a promise and such a reassurance. I love the variety, the greatness of God reflected in every detail of creation. I love how I have to think about how to train the thorny raspberries to obey and how I have to coax the tender daisies to be brave. In each of these I see God communicating with me. I know that I can be thorny but that in order to be useful and bring joy to others I have to be curbed in my own thorniness. I also know I can be afraid, uncertain if I am ready for a task but then God works with me, cleaning out the junk; the old leaves from a dying fall or the garbage that the wind blew my way so that I again have my strength to grow.I am beginning to feel his hothouse effect….something is taking root.
